the displaced texan

Viva Las Vegas. Viva La Blogosphere.  I had the great opportunity to go to Sin City over Easter weekend with my wonderful wife to witness a family member be married.  While I was out there I watched and observed–it was a total onslaught of the senses.  Why do stores with Subway’s in them always stink?  Like bad?  Anyway, during my two day stay, a couple of thoughts on social media came to mind.

1. People never stay where they stay: Pretty simple idea and maybe one that has been talked about to death.  We stayed at the Wynn, but always left to eat, gamble, sight see, etc.  The reason? While the Wynn was pretty (the room was awesome) I couldn’t see paying 4 dollars for a cup of coffee.  I couldn’t see paying $20 for two cocktails.  My favorite word comes to mind: value.  The coffee, the drinks, the atmosphere not worth the value.

We wandered. Ate at Treasure Island, The Mirage, in old Downtown.  We bought drinks at New York, New York. Gambled at MGM and hung out in the Venetian.  So what’s the lesson? While you’re home site is beautiful, is it providing the best value to your consumers?  Are you building a website knowing that people will leave?  And what is the value proposition for people staying?

With this consumer digital migration in mind, Facebook Connect and OpenID are excellent tools to integrate into a site.  These tools enable, almost empower, consumers to leave a site but take all their information with them.

What if the Wynn had allowed us to use our room card to swipe at NY NY to buy a drink, at the MGM to play blackjack, at Treasure Island to eat the buffet.  They would be able to collect and aggregate buying preferences of all their guests to make their offerings stronger.  They would understand how far people would travel from the casino to get what they want-what the value of walking clear across the strip was just to get away from $20 Captain and Cokes.

This is more about technology, but it’s using social tools to understand consumer behavior.  Oh and by the way. I think the Wynn costs that much to pay for it’s flash-heavy, light on information website.  Having said all of that, let me reiterate, the Wynn was gorgeous and I recommend sleeping there to everyone!

2. Your visitors don’t all look the same, act the same, think the same, but they all make up your community: So, a couple of life’s questions were answered for me in Las Vegas: Why are there so many tattoo parlors in America and who buys all those Hooker shoes from places in the mall that blare loud music? (One for the Murtaugh List)  Vegas has every type of person, demographic and lifestyle all melded into one bright-lighted community.  It’s great.  It made me realize there’s not a single demographic to target, but the value of Vegas is what draws them all to one place.

The lesson: when building community, understand that your content has to be solid enough for all audiences, because all audiences will come.

3. What Recession: Vegas was packed. When looking for sweet deals on rooms and airfare, none to be found — at least not from Memphis.  A journalist I spoke with this week said he found deals all over the place, but he was coming from California.  Anyway, cabbies were bullish. They said it’s not that people aren’t coming, they just aren’t spending because they don’t have 8 credit cards with high limits. People coming are losing cash.  Not sinking deeper into credit debt.

The lesson: opportunity is out there.  However, organizations don’t have credit cushion to test out social media programs.  There needs to be strategy, baked in facts, to drive social media to community-think.  And, understand perspectives of a good deal are all over.  If a good idea doesn’t work in your group, that doesn’t mean it won’t work in another.  Put your social equity on the table and double down.

Anyway, I didn’t lose much, the only thing I gained was weight and I didn’t sleep.  What a perfect vacation.